How to Choose an Image For Your Printed Items

10/05/2012 | by: Shaun Cleary

With the coming of large-format printers, we've seen the advent of images on banners / stickers and a really creative aspect being added to the medium. Banners & stickers have come a long way from vinyl letters, PVC and some glue and printers really showcase this, allowing for adventurous banners & stickers to be the norm.

Creating banners & stickers with images requires you to have an image in the first place - fine you may think. However, there are a number of other things to consider when choosing an image for your advert and the type of format the image is in is a very important one.

Think Resolution

The resolution of an image is essentially the number of dots in a given area and is usually measured in dpi, or sots per inch. Images used in print have far higher dpi than those used on the web -300dpi as opposed 72dpi. This means that an image taken from the web is not of much use to large-format printing, such as printing on banners as it will look broken up and pixilated on a larger image.

JPEGs

This file type is probably the most common for images on PCs and is a very useful format as it allows for easy scaling down of images, that ensures they still look great. One thing not that many people know about JPEG, is that when you scale down in size, you are in fact, also scaling down in the quality of the image. If you look at the artifacts around such images, particularly around text areas, you will see these. If these are evident in the image, you use, they will be printed on the banner. On the upside, they are often only visible to very close up and so if your banner is to be seen from a distance, this won't be a problem.

TIFF

This bitmap imagery is among the most revered by those in the banner making industry as it comes with its own compression, which unlike that of the JPEG is lossless and so remains the same quality even when the file size is reduced. This means that it can be sent to and fro, and never loses its quality. When this is transferred to printed items, it will mean a higher-quality image. However, do not that the higher the resolution, the better the image.

Vectors

Vector images are the best of all sources as they scale infinitely and always look the same no matter what size. This is usually the image provided by professionals and come in. Ai, .eps, or .pdf format. They ensure that your logo, or image look excellent whether they are small, medium or large.

For banners and stickers all three of these formats work perfectly well, once they are sent in the correct resolution. Images can add a certain elegance to a banner that other items don't and also create that professional appeal many businesses want for their company at a low cost.